A comprehensive overview of the Cold Spot

Abstract

The report of a significant deviation of the CMB temperature anisotropies distribution from Gaussianity (soon after the public release of the WMAP data in 2003) has become one of the most solid WMAP anomalies. This detection grounds on an excess of the kurtosis of the Spherical Mexican Hat Wavelet coefficients at scales of around 10 degrees. At these scales, a prominent feature --located in the southern Galactic hemisphere-- was highlighted from the rest of the SMHW coefficients: the Cold Spot. This article presents a comprehensive overview related to the study of the Cold Spot, paying attention to the non-Gaussianity detection methods, the morphological characteristics of the Cold Spot, and the possible sources studied in the literature to explain its nature. Special emphasis is made on the Cold Spot compatibility with a cosmic texture, commenting on future tests that would help to give support or discard this hypothesis.

21 pages, 14 figures. Accepted for publication in the Advances in Astronomy special issue "Testing the Gaussianity and Statistical Isotropy of the Universe"

References in corpus (12)

• The non-Gaussian Cold Spot in the 3-year WMAP data
• Integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect from the cross correlation of WMAP3 year and the NRAO VLA sky survey data: New results and constraints on dark energy
• Extragalactic Radio Sources and the WMAP Cold Spot
• Local Voids as the Origin of Large-angle Cosmic Microwave Background Anomalies I
• Local Voids as the Origin of Large-angle Cosmic Microwave Background Anomalies: The Effect of a Cosmological Constant
• Global universe anisotropy probed by the alignment of structures in the cosmic microwave background
• Needlet Detection of Features in WMAP CMB Sky and the Impact on Anisotropies and Hemispherical Asymmetries
• Alignment tests for low CMB multipoles
• Foreground Subtraction of Cosmic Microwave Background Maps using WI-FIT (Wavelet based hIgh resolution Fitting of Internal Templates)
• CMB Lensing and the WMAP Cold Spot
• A redshift survey towards the CMB Cold Spot
• Variograms of the Cosmic Microwave Background Temperature Fluctuations: Confirmation of Deviations from Statistical Isotropy

Cited by in corpus (45)

• Challenges for $\Lambda$CDM: An update
• Planck 2013 results. XXIII. Isotropy and statistics of the CMB
• Planck 2015 results. XVI. Isotropy and statistics of the CMB
• CMB Anomalies after Planck
• Planck 2013 results. XXVI. Background geometry and topology of the Universe
• Higher Criticism for Large-Scale Inference, Especially for Rare and Weak Effects
• Detection of a Supervoid Aligned with the Cold Spot of the Cosmic Microwave Background
• Can a supervoid explain the Cold Spot?
• Evidence against a supervoid causing the CMB Cold Spot
• Cosmic troublemakers: the Cold Spot, the Eridanus Supervoid, and the Great Walls
• Planck CMB Anomalies: Astrophysical and Cosmological Secondary Effects and the Curse of Masking
• Covariance of CMB anomalies
• The DES view of the Eridanus supervoid and the CMB Cold Spot
• Cosmology Intertwined: A Review of the Particle Physics, Astrophysics, and Cosmology Associated with the Cosmological Tensions and Anomalies
• To the center of cold spot with Planck
• Bayesian analysis of anisotropic cosmologies: Bianchi VII_h and WMAP
• Local analyses of Planck maps with Minkowski Functionals
• Preferred axis of CMB parity asymmetry in the masked maps
• CMB low multipole alignments in the $\mathbf{\Lambda }$CDM and Dipolar models
• Isotropy statistics of CMB hot and cold spots
• The CMB Cold Spot as predicted by foregrounds around nearby galaxies
• Black Holes and Neutron Stars in an Oscillating Universe
• Hemispherical Power Asymmetry in intensity and polarization for Planck PR4 data
• Relic photon temperature versus redshift and the cosmic neutrino background
• The inflationary origin of the Cold Spot anomaly
• CMB Cold Spot in the Planck light
• Probing CMB Cold Spot through Local Minkowski Functionals
• SU(2)${}_{\mathrm{CMB}}$ and the cosmological model: angular power spectra
• Correlation of supernova redshifts with temperature fluctuations of the Cosmic Microwave Background
• Influence of Planck foreground masks in the large angular scale quadrant CMB asymmetry
• Analysis of $\sim 10^6$ spiral galaxies from four telescopes shows large-scale patterns of asymmetry in galaxy spin directions
• Revisiting the large-scale CMB anomalies: The impact of the SZ signal from the Local Universe
• Cosmological parameters from Planck data in SU(2)${}_{\mathrm{CMB}}$, their local $\Lambda$CDM values, and the modified photon Boltzmann equation
• Anisotropic power spectrum and the observed low-l power in PLANCK CMB data
• Phase statistics of the WMAP 7 year data
• Level correlations of the CMB temperature angular power spectrum
• Morphometry on the sphere: Cartesian and irreducible Minkowski tensors explained and implemented
• Quadrant asymmetry in the angular distribution of the Cosmic Microwave Background in the Planck satellite data
• CMB-PAInT: An inpainting tool for the cosmic microwave background
• Cosmological consequences of statistical inhomogeneity
• Thermodynamics of SU(2) quantum Yang-Mills theory and CMB anomalies
• Hidden in the background: a local approach to CMB anomalies
• Searching for Extremal Spots in Planck Lensing Maps
• On the detection of point sources in Planck LFI 70 GHz CMB maps based on cleaned K-map
• The CMB Cold Spot under the lens II: Lensing signatures in polarization and cosmic texture footprints